Ratings33
Average rating3.6
It's 2003 and Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed, the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. Inside is a new reality, thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. The bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike. The deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner evokes with great humor and precision.
Reviews with the most likes.
The moral of this story - that people and their choices are complex and someone's circumstances have an outsized role in shaping both her actions and their consequences - is worthwhile, although I hope not novel to any readers. But this book was too long and the characters were almost universally flat and unlikeable.
I listened to ~10% of the audiobook, but will dnf this now, because I'm not feeling engaged. The writing is fine, it's a simple lack of interest in the character/plot at this moment in time. What peaked my interest most were the Romy Schneider references. Not enough though.
A well-written novel exploring the impact of class, race and gender in the criminal justice system - I've seen complaints of two-dimensional characters but personally I found them mostly well-rounded and interesting. ⭐️ 3.5/5